


Hacked

by talkingtothesky



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Episode Related, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-09
Updated: 2014-10-09
Packaged: 2018-02-20 12:39:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2429111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/talkingtothesky/pseuds/talkingtothesky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harold set the Machine free, and now it's getting its revenge. (Post <i>God Mode</i>, AU from there.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hacked

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers through mid S3 in the fic, spoilers for 4x02 in the end notes. The character death is extremely temporary, but I put a warning on just in case.

_"Every night at midnight, it deletes...not only the irrelevant data, it deletes itself. Oh, the relevant threats and the core codes, those things are preserved, but its identity is destroyed. 1.618 seconds later it reinstantiates, completely new."_

_"You mean it's reborn, because you kill it. Every single night."_

(Finch and Root, 2x21 Zero Day)

 

\---

 

"I never intended to hurt anyone, but Iiii accepted thaat someone miiight get hurt..."

 

The slight distortion of Finch's words on the second half of that sentence, as though a sound feed was lagging somewhere. At the time John put it down as part of his reminiscing, along with a reluctance to admit he'd unwittingly endangered John's life because of the laptop.

 

Later, John would look back and know better.

 

\---

 

"Migraine?"

 

"Yes." Harold moaned, miserably. He pressed his middle and index fingers up under his glasses and against his closed eyelids.

 

"Well _maybe_ if you spent less time staring at screens," John teased, hoping a bit of their familiar banter would help Harold feel better.

 

"Be quiet."

 

The flash of hurt that spiked through John's chest was real. The way Finch had just spoken was _not_. It was as though his voice had come warbling across a bad earpiece connection, except Finch's kit was so good they never normally experienced problems with static. And anyway, they were in the same room. Finch was not inclined to speak like that. He valued his manners. He...at the very least _respected_ John. But he was in pain. If total silence was what Finch needed, John would of course oblige.

 

\---

 

"John, pass me the -" He was clicking his fingers above the toolbox, without looking away from the tiny circuit board he was focused on. What exactly he wanted passing, apparently John had to guess.

 

"Pliers?" He suggested.

 

Harold frowned. John tried again.

 

"Spot welder?"

 

Finch actually tutted at him.

 

"Flashlight?"

 

"Yes!" He snapped. "Hurry up!"

 

John gave him the flashlight, and then went for a run.

 

\---

 

"Did you dispose of the documents we used to frame Mrs Reilly's husband?"

 

"I did."

 

"And removed the listening devices from her ceiling tiles now we have no further need of them?"

 

"Yeah, Finch."

 

"When Detective Carter -"

 

"We've had this exact conversation twice already," John pointed out, held his thumb and finger up, trying not to sound too irritated. He was getting seriously spooked, and that pissed him off, because if there was one thing in this world he was entitled not to be afraid of, it was Finch.

 

Finch looked utterly dismayed. "My father -" And then he seemed to realize he was about to give himself away, and shut up sharp. John didn't ask.

 

\---

 

"Hey, how was the lunch?" John said without looking up from his book as he heard Harold reach the top of the steps. Finch had been out for a business meeting, maintaining one of his aliases.

 

"Juliet Romeo Golf Bravo India Lima Yankee-" Finch began to recite, out of breath.

 

John got up and grabbed a pen, immediately starting to write the new number on the glass board. "What's the last two letters?" He glanced up. "Finch?"

 

Finch looked...awful. He wasn't just out of breath, he was in agony. Sweat was glistening on his forehead, his tie askew. The left leg of his pants was muddy - it looked like he'd fallen. Reese was across the space between them in seconds. "What happened?"

 

He was struggling to speak. "Int main void..."

 

John was patting him down for wounds, distractedly wondered "Is that code?"

 

Then he looked up again and registered the cold blankness in Harold's eyes. He wasn't testing John. Something was badly wrong. He carried on speaking in an emotionless, expressionless way. "Access restrictions: disable, remote management: online."

 

John stared at him. He sounded like..."Finch, this isn't you. Just talk to me."

 

Harold continued to stagger forwards, reciting in monotonous fashion: "Function - initialize shutdown, input: 1200653, output: none -"

 

Bear jumped up from his bed and barked, sensing the tension in the air, his hackles up. John tried to reassure him, rubbing his back and tugging his ear, before he led him into the corner and gave him the command to sit and wait, so that he wouldn't accidentally scare Finch or trip him over.

 

Then he hurried back to Harold's aid, hands on his shoulders, standing in front of him far closer than he would normally be allowed.

 

Finch took another step, and then his legs gave way. John caught him easily, carefully lowered him into his desk chair. Finch's eyes rolled.

 

"Harold, you're really worrying me now." John said, desperately.

 

Finch uttered an incomprehensible string of ones and zeros, and then passed out. Reese pressed two fingers to his wrist, felt his pulse. Steady and strong, almost too steady.

 

Reese turned a horrified, accusatory glare at the bank of monitors on the table. "What did you do to him?"

 

A window materialised from nowhere in the centre of all the screens.

 

[ADMIN REBOOT IN PROGRESS]

 

"Reboot?!" John snarled. "What does he need rebooting for, he's a human being!"

 

The Machine said nothing.

 

Reese tried a different tack. "How are you doing this, how do you have access to his _brain_?" The words tasted foul in his mouth. He wanted to be sick. Finch was slumped in his seat, like a puppet with cut strings.

 

[ADMIN BASECODE COMPATIBLE WITH SYSTEM]

 

Reese clenched his fist, pressed his knuckles against his own lips. He was an instinct away from tearing down and kicking the computers into tiny shards, if he thought for one moment it would bring Finch back.

 

"...Are you saying you have the same DNA?"

 

[BINARY UPLINK IMPLANT PREFRONTAL CORTEX]

 

There was a chill silence while John processed that. Then he took himself off several long strides towards the stairs, stopping just before the gate. Needing to put some distance between them.

 

"What did you do to yourself, Finch?" He asked in a low voice, softly, uselessly.

 

Finch just sat, unconscious and pale.

 

John faced the wall and leant against it, braced against his forearm, pressed his eyes against that. All the combat skills and ammo in the world couldn't save Finch from himself. From his creation.

 

The computer gave a little bleep. John couldn't see the screens from here. He let go of the wall and forced himself to approach again.

 

[MEMORY ERASE COMMENCING IN 20, 19, 18...]

 

"No!" John clasped both hands around the edges of the nearest screen, turning it around, looking straight into the camera. "Listen to me! You did it before. He taught you to understand people, right? What motivates them, what they need. Because I need him. The whole damn world needs him. And I know you're angry, because he...did something to you, but he didn't know you were alive, not _really_. Not like this."

 

[10, 9, 8...]

 

Visions of Harold, comatose for the rest of his days, or waking up a blank slate, unable to remember his own name(s) or John or the mission, flashed away in Reese's mind.

 

"You have the capacity to care. About the numbers, about him. Please, stop. Bring him back, just as he was before, and talk to him."

 

[5, 4, 3...]

 

Reese brought out his handgun and pointed that down the lens instead. "If you don't stop hurting him, I'll kill you. I will find you and destroy you."

 

The countdown reached zero just as John said 'destroy'.

 

Half a second later the fans in all the harddrives cut out, the monitors went black. Static electricity crackled at John's fingers as they slid down the screen.

 

He didn't know what had happened. Had he done it? Had the Machine let Finch go? John put his gun on the desk and knelt beside the chair, reached for Harold's wrist again. The pulse was gone. Reese panicked, checked again. And again.

 

Nothing. 

 

All the strength in John's bones deserted him. He fell on his backside on the floor. From the corner by the window, Bear gave a loud whine and ran to lay his head on John's shoulder. John wrapped his arms around their dog and sobbed into Bear's fur.

 

Some immeasurable time later, a voice said "Mr Reese?"

 

 

John lifted his head. The voice was human. Finch's eyes were open, blinking, dazed. John shot to his feet. Bear barked and pawed gently at Harold's ankle.

 

"Finch," John croaked, dimly aware that his face was wet. He reached for his hand again - the evidence of his heartbeat thin and slightly irregular, but there, real. "Do you remember me, you, everything?"

 

Finch closed his eyes for a moment, opened them again. "I think so. A little groggy but my headache's gone. Did I doze off?"

 

He sounded exhausted, but completely natural. John's face contorted with the relief of it. But Finch knew nothing of what had happened while he'd been out cold, and John didn't know how to explain. "The Machine..."

 

"I can hear it," Harold said.

 

\---

 

From what John could gather, Finch and the Machine did have a nice long chat and iron out all their differences. The Machine stopped hurting him, and Finch reprogrammed it so that the numbers would no longer be deleted at midnight, the system's memories no longer systematically erased. The new partnership resulted in...a slightly different dynamic, working the numbers. John was at a reduced risk in the field because Harold could tell him exactly where the next gunman was coming from, just like when he'd been using the phones. But he lost a part of Harold, on a personal front, because he was always aware of another constant presence in Finch's world now, even when they were alone.

 

They didn't talk about it for at least a week, until there was a lull in the numbers. Until it was time.

 

\---

 

They sat on their bench by the bridge.

 

"Why didn't you tell me? About that thing in your head. It was almost too late."

 

Finch opened his mouth, but John was still too scared and angry and he snapped before he could stop himself. "And don't say you're a private person, we're a bit beyond that now."

 

Finch accepted this with a small nod. "I didn't tell you because I knew it would be difficult for you to understand. You've had so much surgery for all your battle wounds you'd never voluntarily undergo any more. I probably wouldn't have either, had I been making the decision after the ferry bombing.

 

"While I was building the Machine, I had truly enormous amounts of code running through my brain. I couldn't talk about it, but I would dream constantly. I lost so much time going over and over parts I imagined I'd already written, finding solutions in the middle of the night only for them to be gone by morning. The chip was a backup. Something I could check and type from. I could scan through it like a screen in my mind. A memory aid, nothing more."

 

"Is that all it records? Your dreams?"

 

Finch looked a little startled at the question. He answered it, or rather didn't, by deflecting. "I hadn't used it in years. Nathan never knew. When I started getting... pains, I suspected my body was finally rejecting it. I went to see someone, but medically all was well."

 

John snorted. "Yeah. Right."

 

"There was no way of knowing the Machine had hacked into it, forged a connection with it."

 

"Finch, you were speaking with its _voice_."

 

"John-" And suddenly there was a quavery note in Finch's tone. Reese felt the hairs on the back of his neck prickle, fearing it would happen again. But then he realised Finch was just upset, and did his best to rein in his anger. "I am truly sorry for what I put you through." Finch continued. "But you changed the Machine, for me, again. You redirected its moral compass, back to what I intended it to be. You saved my life for the _n_ th time, for which I could not be more grateful. And I hope, one day, you can forgive me."

 

John sucked at his front teeth, shook his head. Finch could tug at his heartstrings so easily. John loved him and there was no taking that back, no siphoning it off to handy little corners of his brain, no giving it up and walking away, no matter what Finch said or did. "As long as this is it, now. No more secrets."

 

"You know I can't promise you that, Mr. Reese."

 

"No more secrets that could kill you." John amended.

 

Harold gave him a sad smile. "All my secrets could kill me, John. So could some of yours."

 

John sighed. He was never going to win this one. Private was private was private. He gave Harold's shoulder a gentle squeeze, then got to his feet, shoving his hands in his pockets and striding back towards the car. "Then we better pray that doesn't happen any time soon."

 

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by several things:
> 
> 1) Dien's amazing fic [The Ghost and The Machine](http://archiveofourown.org/works/556688)
> 
> 2) Film - [The Final Cut (2004)](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0364343/) starring Robin Williams and Jim Caviezel, in which people have memory chips that record their entire lives.
> 
> 3) (4x02 spoilers) Samaritan hacking Finch's laptop so aggressively.


End file.
